From a blog and a writer that once fully endorsed Silencer’s
Death – Pierce Me and listed Bardo Pond, Thorns and 8 Foot Sativa in his fave
bands list, this statement will come as a real surprise: Jake Bugg’s debut
album, go buy it. Now. It’s a loving proto-Dylan exploration backlit in grouchy
back-porch guitar interludes and youthful gravel-voiced ballads caught in the
crossfire between Dylan worship and pop-folk marketing bullshit. It’s far from
perfect, it’s definitely frozen in the iTunes headlights and stops short of
dredging up Rob Zimmerman’s whisky-soaked carcass to sway gently on stage while
we all blow him kisses. At its worst it abandons the guitar whizzkiddery and
becomes mournful and self-absorbed, but at its frequent best, it sets the deck
aflame with hyperenergetic folk rock wizardry drenched in sweaty infectious
organic real thrills a-la Neil Young
on a full-on England binge or Cadaverous Condition without the Cookie Monster.

I’m a long admirer of people who can exist in the oxygenless
pop universe and still manage full-on freakout workouts because that is a real skill. And about once a
year an album turns up, just like Jake Bugg’s latest, that offers hope and
respite that pop can be good despite
the thousands of hours of retrograde revisionist copypaste non-sequitur
bullshit that the charts reliably churn out every week. It’s doubly annoying
because it would be really easy to just discount an entire avenue of music to
the cultural trash. If I could reliably state that everything on the iTunes
front page was hideous tuneless characterless sexless pap shit out by ken-dolls
purporting to be young men puppeteered by dark-suited arseholes who wouldn’t
put twenty pence in a charity tin without guarantee of return of investment,
and the wasteful music they produce is just historical documents appearing from
one of two places, either from a dimension where Marty McFly never invented rock
and roll and irony doesn’t exist and Rebecca Black was taken seriously, or as
historical curios from a dimension where the rock and roll revolution happened
a long time ago and people engaged in enlightened debate and the walls that
separate us have been glimpsed and demolished by love. Jake Bugg is most
certainly from the latter dimension.

You don’t listen to pop music anymore, remember? Okay, maybe
you do when nobody is looking, or you have some on your phone ‘because someone
sent it to you’, but the stuff you like isn’t really pop. Your argument is pure ‘no true Scotsman’ and Jake Bugg
supplies the ammunition for you guys. Despite its front-page iTunes
poster-launch uppetyness and pure pop sensibilities, it’s folk, apparently. You’ll be able to exist, integrity intact because
it’s not real pop. Well I’m here to tell you that it is. It really really is.
It’s light and short and doesn’t reference anything too obscure and it deserves
to be loved totally for that. There are so many albums vying for my album of the
year. Obviously OM deserve credit for finally, after five records, nailing the beauty, Admiral Sir
Cloudesly Shovell, Goat and Homesick Aldo all deserve album o’ the year fo’
sho’ because of their sheer charm and heathen motherfuckery and now I almost want
to give Jake Bugg recognition for pop album of the year, for something imbued
with all the softer Dylanisms and a righteous young man’s possible generation
defining energy and excitement. Go find it. It’s sweet. It's also damn short and there ain't too much more to say 'bout it so I'mma drop in a well-known lil' band's latest activity, as is my wont.

Deap Vally just released
their second single, accompanied by a UK-shot vid showing things really ain’t
changed since the days of the Riot House (the Continental Hyatt House) and Deap
Vally really have got it. End of the
World is fulla the ‘zact same Vincent Black Shadow-lite gee-tar and fully
sleaze’d-up vox c/o the two righteous lay-deez and, if it’s even possible, more thoroughgoing groove roughhousing
and ‘Lectric Eels-esque proto-punk barnstorming. And I gotta tell yooz that all
this sneaking has got me hyper-psyched for the Deap Vally debut album, which
must be dropping soon. Also keep a full weather eye out for the second Dead
Skeletons LP. I’ve got a few more albums I’m totally keen on but y’all know
there’s gotta be some secrets… even ‘twixt friends.

I always enjoy a challenge. Writing this blog, for example, is quite a challenge because unlike Steve I have practically no experience doing...

So... what?

We're doing a few things here. Adam hosts Lick My Decals Off, Baby! An ongoing exploration into the weirdest recessess of music, nothing is out of bounds and very little is sacred (except Robert Zimmerman). he posts roughly every Friday.

Steven dribbles and geeks out over a selection of hot-off-the-presses masterpieces and undiscovered classics with the long-running In Search of Space, the place to be for essay-length distortion-motivated freakouts. He posts whenever he achieves chemical balance or the angst gets too thick, so keep checking for all the latest updates, or subscribe. His column is also the dwelling place of the Alternative Hall of Fame in which the records of the last ten years that were too weird to live and too rare to die get a deserved podium.

If you want your own oddly named place to sling your poo, email us, we're always looking for contributors.

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